Forza Motorsport 6: Apex Open Beta Live On Windows 10

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I had expected the PC debut of Turn 10 Studios’ respected Xbox drive ’em up Forza would be an all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza, but I missed it happening a few days ago. Er. Well then. Forza Motorsport 6 [official site] is now available in open beta through the Microsoft Store. Yes, it is a stripped-down free-to-play version. No, it doesn’t have multiplayer. And yes, it does require Windows 10, though by now haven’t we all upgraded to 10 whether we wanted to or not? It’s a shame Forza’s PC debut is half-hearted but hey, if you want to go zoom, you now can! Its zooms are quite pretty.

The open beta is a step towards a proper launch this summer. Turn 10 will be improving things, boosting performance, adding features, and so on. They explain:

“For example, wheel support is coming to Forza Motorsport 6: Apex and Turn 10 is busy working to ensure that Apex delivers the kind of wheel support, performance, and features that racing fans expect from a range of available hardware. In addition we plan to support additional features that we know are important to PC gamers, such as the ability to disable Vsync and an in-app framerate counter.”

Forza Motorsport 6: Apex, to recap, is a free-to-play version of the Xbox One racing game. It doesn’t – and won’t – have online multiplayer, focusing on zooming round tracks against your friends’ digital ghosts, their trained carbots, the AIs they raised like children then locked inside a ton of screaming virtual metal – their Drivatars.

What my friends don’t know is that my Drivatar was conceived beneath a full moon on an obsidian Xbox, thirteen of my dearest sisters flowing into its eldritch circuits. Think carefully before you cut my Drivatar off round a hairpin bend.

11 Comments

I love cars (in real life) and of course love racing games. I have steering wheel and Playseat racing chair to play Project CARS, Assetto Corsa, Dirt Rally, Euro Truck Simulator 2 and The CREW. But in 2016, there are racing games that actually not support steering wheel from the start. Play a racing game on a racing chair with gamepad is ultra retard.

Eager to check this out though, as as much as Project Cars and Assetto Corsa have been trying to be Forza Motorsport for the PC, it’s fun to see more variety in that space. Hard to believe that nobody was trying to be that “Forza/Gran Turismo on the PC” thing untill 2 years ago.

Every time Microsoft does something good for gaming on PC they take two steps back. I’ve been hoping for a PC Forza for ages and they deliver a cut-down free to play version that’s locked behind their baffling store. The second was I suppose a given considering it’s pretty much their MO to force gamers to upgrade with ‘exclusives’ but I don’t see why they even try considering the resounding success of the beloved GFWL.

I guess it’s moderately pretty (and I’m running it maxxed out) but a combination of no wheel support (as yet), fixed (ie not dynamic) weather & lighting, and basic game model (ie progression/future microtransactions) means that I’ve moved it from my SSD to one of my slower HDDs just to come back to it in a few months to see if it improves (but to save space for now and the pain of having to re-download it)

I think it’s totally lovely, and *exactly* the kind of sim-lite, gameay progression, plays well with a pad, car collecting game that is missing on PCs.

Project Cars and Assetto Corsa both require a wheel, which means I play them rarely (can’t be bothered to set up the wheel every time), and PC in particular lacks the gamey progression which I enjoy in these types of games. DIRT is fantastic, but very specific.

Just a shame it’s just a teaser/demo – I’d buy a full Forza game immediately.